Word: spaceship
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...enter the park and, instead of a Main Street or Spaceship Earth, you see paths with no special markers leading you know not where. This is the Oasis, a riot of trees where cast members will point you toward the greenery so you can see a snoozing two-toed sloth in one tree, a couple of military macaws skirmishing in another. Then you reach the park's central icon, the Tree of Life, a 145-ft.-high broccoli stalk--actually an oil rig festooned with fake bark and 103,000 artificial leaves, each attached by hand--into which 325 creatures...
...raves from auto writers and customers alike for the EV1's elegant engineering, its spaceship smoothness, and its intoxicating acceleration--0 to 60 m.p.h. in 8.5 sec. "My customers are fascinated," says Michael Monti, who parks his car in front of his Tempe, Ariz., restaurant. Beverly Hills realtor Constance Chestnut drives clients around in her EV1 because "it's hot and sexy." Hawthorne Savings Bank attracted $1.5 million in deposits from customers after it advertised its newly installed electric-car chargers. EV1 drivers have even founded a club and a Website. "This is no martyr mobile for environmentalists," says club...
Holub is less successful when he turns his hand to overt political commentary. The heading of the book's second section, "Trouble on Spaceship Earth," sounds like the title of a Discovery Channel special, and the subject matter is suspiciously similar. When Holub dispenses unqualified environmental advice and chastises trendy scientific theorists, his otherwise sparkling essays acquire the atmosphere of soapbox sermons. The otherwise pedestrian chapter is punctuated by a few gems, such as "What the Nose Knows," a Proustian reverie on the atavistic power of scent, and the powerful "Shedding Life," which might have been titled "Killing a Muskrat...
Speaking of Showgirls, Starship Troopers is also audaciously political and even--gasp!--feminist in its handling of the gender-mixing of its military forces. Gender is never portrayed as an impediment to becoming a spaceship pilot or front-line soldier; actually, neither the film nor its characters acknowledge any gender gap at all. The harmony between male and female soldiers is so improbably complete that everyone showers together in the wide-open locker room. Sexual liaisons do occur among unit members, but cease en flagrante when the battle-siren sounds. Not a character in the movie questions any of this...
Naturally, the creatures' old nemesis, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), has been--literally--reincarnated, and her wit and toughness were not forgotten in the cloning. Nor did screenwriter Joss Whedon (of TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer) neglect to provide her with a spaceship of fools who refuse to believe her warnings of impending carnage. He has even given Ripley a soul sister (Winona Ryder) to bond with. O.K., she's a robot, but she's got a heart of gold as well as buns of steel...